


Winter Midnight

by Ankaret



Category: Young Dracula
Genre: Angst and Humor, Diary/Journal, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-30
Updated: 2011-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a hard life being as demonically handsome, learned, dangerous and possessed of good hair as Bertrand du Fortunesa.  Particularly when the Grand High Vampire's Council keep thwarting you, you're trying to solve a mystery involving dolphins, and you can't help thinking about the Chosen One and why he doesn't spend enough time with you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [falsteloj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsteloj/gifts).



**1 February 2008**

News from Stokely that the Grand High Vampire is dead. This is so inconsiderate. I had only just ordered my spring wardrobe and now it will have to be made over to be a hint more funereal, in honour of the occasion. Five jet buttons on the sleeve of the new doublet rather than four, and the lining of the velvet cape to be done over in _sospiro della tomba_ rather than scarlet. Sigh.

(Where is Stokely? Asked von Racalud, and he said he thought it was in Wales. Where is Wales?)

 **5 February 2008**

I have been asked to give the keynote speech at this century's Vampiric Conclave and to chair a debate on the subject of 'Former Breathers: To Enslave Or To Exterminate?' I suppose that old idiot Moroi will be there giving his usual 'Hug a Half-Fang' speech and making snide remarks. He's always been jealous of my noble bearing, and of course of my position as guardian of the Praedictum Impaver. Last century I found him trying to pry its covers open with a screwdriver. SO EMBARRASSING.

No news on the identity of the new Grand High Vampire. How am I supposed to plan my robes for his ensanguination ceremony if I don't know whether he's a Spring or a Winter?

I myself am of course a Winter Midnight, which is the rarest and most attractive of all vampiric skin and hair tones. Told Goody McEldrich as much, and she said that it sounded like an air freshener. Hmph.

 **10 February 2008**

The Praedictum Impaver was unnaturally agitated during the hours of light: it was tapping one fingerbone when I left it by my bedside, and by the time I woke at dusk it had reduced my nightstand to a pile of grey dust. Most odd.

 **11 February 2008**

Exciting news! The Chosen One has donned the Crown of the Grand High Vampire and will lead us into a dark and glorious future. After four centuries of unlife spent in guardianship of the book, I will finally live to see the night when the Chosen One pries open its skeletal cover and reads from its pages! Ah, to be undead on a night like this – what bliss! I'm going out to celebrate.

 **12 February 2008**

Woke with terrible headache crashing like the Adriatic behind my flawless brow. What have I been drinking? What had what I was drinking been drinking? Why is there a werewolf club kid in my bed?

This is SO EMBARRASSING. Four hundred years of wearing my starched doublets buttoned up to my manly chin and looking down on the wretched depravities of my fellow-vampires, and now this.

Perhaps no one will find out.

 **13 February 2008**

'Hair of the dog that bit you?' said von Racalud when I saw him in the catacombs. AND THEN HE SMIRKED.

Thank the Powers of Eternal Darkness that I will be leaving as soon as I have authorisation from the Grand High Vampire's Council, to take the Praedictum Impaver to the Chosen One and usher in a new age of decadent bloodshed.

Promotional portrait of the new Grand High Vampire released. Strangely, it looks like a school photograph with the crown daubed on in curry sauce. Even more oddly, it is signed 'Renfield'. Perhaps a new avant-garde artist?

Can't help thinking that the Crown of the Grand High Vampire might have looked better on me, though I would not wish to get curry sauce in the luxuriant glory that is my hair.

 **20 August 2008**

Still in Transylvania. The Council claim that they cannot release the details of the Chosen One's whereabouts to me due to 'a routine clerical error'. Suppose this means someone has eaten the clerical staff.

Why does everyone not have my superb qualities of self-restraint? Not to mention the superb shoulder and calf muscles which make me not only an attractive specimen of vampiric manhood but a remarkably zippy bat.

 **1 January 2009**

The Council refuse to tell me where the Chosen One is due to 'an upgrade to their database'. I've seen their database. It consists of one trained rat and three filing cabinets so ornamented with gilt bat wings, snarling silver wolves' heads and drapings of jet spiderweb that the rat is the only one who can actually get into them. Am very unimpressed.

 **2 February 2009**

Council blame 'rat fatigue'.

 **21 October 2009**

Council blame 'an unexpected fire in the Carpathian Roasting Pit'.

 **27 January 2010**

Council blame 'the wrong kind of thunderstorms'.

 **11 August 2010**

Council blame 'rain of mummified frogs'.

 **13 February 2011**

Met von Racalud unexpectedly at the tailors. He was buying one of those little off-the-shoulder capes. So last millennium. He asked me how the Chosen One's studies were going, and said that he'd always thought he'd like to 'take a stab at the tutoring game' himself.

Almost said that I knew what I would like to take a stab at, but von Racalud would only take it as a come-on and I'm not that desperate.  
Even though I don't have a date and it's coming up on Valentine's Day.

Who am I going to take to the traditional massacre? NOT VON RACALUD THAT IS FOR SURE.

 **15 July 2011**

Stormed into the Council Chamber and demanded that they tell me the Chosen One's whereabouts at once. No doubt cowed by my military bearing and impressively ornamented uniform (such a good idea to pay extra for all that silver braid, it sets off my stalwart shoulders beautifully) they at once proffered an answer.

Or, to be precise, thirteen answers – thirteen being the number of the Council – ranging from 'Bulgaria' to 'I think he went to the bathroom' to 'In a pineapple under the sea'.

Am disgusted with them all. Will have to begin my own investigations.

 **29 September 2011**

Discovered the whereabouts of the Chosen One remarkably easily, by posting on the Slayers Guild forums as 'stakegroupie1599' . The idiot Slayers were very willing to share their information. Particularly after I posted a portrait of myself, in that sleeveless duelling costume of mine brandishing a katana.

 **5 October 2011**

Despite having discovered the hiding place of the Chosen One, I have decided to postpone my departure. I shall continue to masquerade as 'stakegroupie1599' for a little while longer, in order to entice Slayers Guild forum member 'ButchProf4U' to send me photographs. I wouldn't want the Chosen One's studies to be interrupted by unrecognised slayers, after all.

Praedictum Impaver very agitated.

 **14 October 2011**

ButchProf4U's photographs a great disappointment. Set off across the Channel by night package mail.

 **1 November 2011**

It seems that the Chosen One and his father are living above a _school_ , which is full of peasant brats of the lowest order. I doubt any of them could trace their ancestry back to the eleventh century, and if they could, it would probably consist of an undifferentiated succession of lowly serfs. Many of them, no doubt, the _same_ lowly serf.

I have a coat of arms with sixteen quarterings and one beheading. I cannot be expected to associate with such riffraff. Went to bed early with a headache.

 **2 November 2011**

My job here will be a difficult one. The Chosen One is learning neither duelling, nor the etiquette of blood sports, nor how to recognise a rare vintage. If I had only had a free hand four years ago when he first ascended to the throne and donned the crown!

Though I confess that a free hand over such a young child would not be as… appealing as a free hand over a young man who has grown up with such interesting pallor and decided opinions. I do believe he may be another Winter Midnight like myself. Such colouring comes only once or twice in a millennium.

Also, he appears to have already defeated von Racalud. Ha!

 **8 November 2011**

My sleeping quarters here are repellent. The wallpaper is peeling and the floors squeak, and the place smells of school dinners, when it doesn't smell of anything worse.

To add to everything else, the Draculas keep _pets_. A revolting little werewolf which I don't believe is house-trained, and even worse, a half-fang. Ugh! I am sure I am allergic to half-fang dander. And I don't even have a hypo-allergenic coffin pillow.

The Chosen One refuses to give his full time and attention to me. I mean to the Praedictum Impaver.

 **10 November 2011**

The Praedictum Impaver is the closest I have ever seen it to opening - four whole skeletal fingers, at least - but the Chosen One refuses to focus his full power upon it. Worse still, I suspect that he wants _peace_ between vampires and breathers. I am so furious that I could hardly co-ordinate my coffin-lining with my cravat. ('Skies over Siberia' grey - it has always suited me.) I attempted to remonstrate with the Chosen One, but he just fixed me with a stony gaze and declined to talk about it. It's really quite remarkable how advanced his stony gaze is for a vampire of his years. Later, when I was looking through his bedroom keyhole for purely tuition-related reasons, I noticed him checking the Facebook page of someone called 'R. Branagh'.

Looked up this Branagh myself as soon as I had internet access, and it seems that he attends the sixth-form of a school called Stokely Grammar. Find this an ominous coincidence, given that the Chosen One used to reside in a castle near Stokely.

On the other hand, Branagh appears to be utterly obsessed with _dolphins_ and to have been so since he was a small child, if the YouTube video of his brothers reminiscing about how he used to dress up in a homemade costume and beg to be left at the seaside is anything to go by. I can't imagine what the Chosen One could have seen in him. He's tall, I suppose, but pfui! I am taller, and moreover am a noted duelling champion and have a cleft in my chin that makes grown men weak at the knees.

Does the Chosen One have some long-term evil scheme involving dolphins? Or possibly just a secret and unhealthy passion for them? I must find out.

 **11 November 2011**

The Slayers' Guild forums proved irritatingly unhelpful on the subject of dolphins, though several people were kind enough to send me interesting photographs of themselves in swimwear.

 **12 November 2011**

Steeled my nerves, and my nasal passages, and decided to enquire of the Count's servant Renfield as to what he knew about dolphins. I know it is below my station to hobnob with servants, but he is undoubtedly the weakest link in the household as far as mental prowess goes, and the least likely to wish to know _why_ I am making enquiries.

Unfortunately it turns out that Renfield knows nothing about dolphins beyond various disgusting ways to cook them. Have no wish to dine on bottlenose stuffed with straw. Ugh.

 **13 November 2011**

An unsettled day's sleep. I dreamed that the Count had won a 'Best Hair On An Undead Predator' contest and I hadn't even placed. Woke feeling distinctly edgy.

It cannot possibly be that the Chosen One is troubling my emotions. I am four hundred years old. I am devastatingly attractive from my perfectly curled locks down to my well-formed toes. I am the guardian of the Praedictum Impaver, and the winner of the Tamburlane Memorial Duelling Cup three centuries in a row. I don't _have_ emotions.

Unless you count bloodlust. Bloodlust and a calculating delight in the downfall of my foes. Bloodlust, a calculating delight in the downfall of my foes, and a seething intellectual curiosity concerning the contents of the Praedictum Impaver.

But no emotions beyond that. Really. I have already had cause to speak severely to the Chosen One on the subject of letting himself fall prey to emotions. It would be most unbecoming to find myself suffering from emotions myself, particularly with the Leaders of the Clans expected at any moment.

And yet I find myself increasingly agitated. I blame the revolting circumstances in which I have to lodge, which are unsettling the humours of my remarkably pure and high-bred blood. This morning Renfield served us cockroaches _en croute_ for breakfast, and they weren't even the best kind of cockroaches. At this rate the leaders of the Clans will descend, only to find that I've broken out in some kind of embarrassing rash.

Something must be done.

 **15 November 2011**

Attempted to shut the half-fang outside to burn in the sunlight, but was foiled by the Chosen One.

I can't decide whether I'm outraged at him, or delighted that he's foiling me. He _ought_ to be foiling people left, right and centre by this stage of the training, after all. Or rather, he ought to be past the 'foiling all and sundry' stage and into 'only bothering to foil worthy opponents', which would, of course, be me. And my amazing hair, _naturellement_. And my broad shoulders. And my brooding gaze. Not that there's anything wrong with _his_ brooding gaze. It's very… brooding. Full of leashed power just waiting to be let go. And… where was I?

Ah, yes. I'm very pleased to see him showing the true cruelty and indifference to others' feelings that we expect in a Grand High Vampire.

Not that I have feelings. Beyond, of course, bloodlust, and… we've been through all that.

In any case, was able to blame the whole affair on the Chosen One's sister Ingrid, who has been poking her nose far too closely into my business. I suppose she wants the Praedictum Impaver for herself. Which is understandable, of course, double-crossing and treachery being a respectable part of vampiric nature, but still, I would prefer fewer interruptions to my work. I continue to hope that the Council will support me by sending her and her father notice that they have won a free holiday in Whitby, or something. They would be kept busy trying to foist bowls of poisoned whelks upon each other and push each other out of the rigging of ships, and I would be left alone with the Chosen One. I mean with the Chosen One and the book.

 **17 November 2011**

In the course of my investigation, took on the necessary task of looking through the bathroom keyhole while the Chosen One was bathing. He does not appear to be a were-dolphin, which is of course in many ways a relief, though it closes down one possibility for his fascination with the undeserving Branagh.

The Grand High Vampire's Council would undoubtedly be pleased with my unswerving devotion to duty, no matter how personally distasteful I may find the things I am called upon to do. _Praedictum Impaver In Omnia_ , and all that.

Must suggest to Renfield that the keyholes around this place are annoyingly snug, and could stand to be expanded.

 **22 November 2011**

The Chosen One has opened the Praedictum Impaver and embraced his true, evil destiny!

I feel quite weak at the knees, and must fan myself.

 **23 November 2011**

Must admit that I was a little surprised by the contents of the Praedictum Impaver. I had never been sure what was inside it. Goody McEldrich always thought it might be some kind of demonic thousand-year planner. Von Raculud, on the other hand, believed it to be something called a 'Christmas 1462 Young Impaler's Annual', or possibly the original Grand High Vampire's little black book containing the names and addresses of attractive vampiric ladies.

The Chosen One is still evil. It suits him.

I tried to question his sister Ingrid on the subject of dolphins, but she merely initiated a complicated plot to turn the Count against me, and, when that failed, attempted to stab me with my own spiked thumb-ring. Ladies are so sensitive about this kind of thing. Also, think she is jealous of my academic credentials, or possibly my poise and cheekbones.

 **28 November 2011**

The Chosen One has fled into the night without leaving so much as a forwarding address! Not even for me – I thought that even if he did not deign to leave any message for the freeloaders who he allows to live upon his gracious bounty in this attic, he would have left some little memento for _me_. In the margins of his schoolbooks, perhaps, or on a Post-It stuck to the underside of his underwear drawer. But he hasn't. I've looked.

Blood has no savour for me. Even the hope of revealing the full text of the Praedictum Impaver holds no appeal. I HATE THIS REVOLTING COUNTRY AND ALL ITS OCCUPANTS. I wish I was home in Transylvania.

Actually, if I had kidnapped the Chosen One and taken him to Transylvania when all of this first began, I would never have been expected to make nice with his ridiculous hangers-on, and he would have had no distractions to keep him from me. I mean from his studies.

We could have learned Old High Wallachian together. We could have discussed the children of the night, and how they can be persuaded to make sweet music rather than atonal howling. How we would have laughed as I introduced him to the delights of the Old City and the secrets of the catacombs! He, the Chosen One, born to rule vampirekind for the next thousand years, and I, his beloved mentor, forever by his side, his master and yet his servant!

I spend my evenings stalking the attic halls looking anguished, my nights standing on the battlements in a dramatic manner, and my early mornings frantically searching the Internet for any mention of the Chosen One, dolphins, or the mysterious Robin Branagh, who I am certain holds the key to the riddle of the Chosen One's personality.

I know that you will return, most beloved and most evil of pupils. I know that you secretly yearn for the secrets which only I can bestow upon you.

In the meantime, I will just have to content myself with trying to decide which of your worthless household I should sacrifice first in order to feed their blood to the Praedictum Impaver.

I can sense that it's feeling hungry.

 **12 December 2011**

I do not wish to speak of the events of recent weeks. It is all FAR TOO EMBARRASSING. First there was an upsetting revelation concerning the half-fang, then the school was infested with undesirables from the Chosen One's past, and finally I was separated from my beloved Praedictum Impaver, though fortunately we are now reunited. When I look back on my actions, I can only assume that my usual flawless logic and cool daring were impaired by a Slayer secret weapon, or possibly, as I have previously suggested, by some kind of allergy.

 _Nil desperandum_ , Bertrand! The Chosen One must desire the return of the Praedictum Impaver: and so your path and his will assuredly cross again, one dark night not too far from now.

In the meantime, I intend to travel to Stokely, to work my vampiric wiles upon this Robin Branagh person, and find out whether his obsession was always… with dolphins. Often, when a breather had a fixation on one one subject and their mind was subjected to vampiric intervention, their feeble human mind compensates by fixating itself upon another target. And wiped memories can, after all, be unwiped.

And speaking of _unwiped_ , I must make myself busy sending every possession of mine that was touched, or even breathed on, by Renfield or the half-fang or that disgusting were-puppy out to be professionally cleaned. I would not wish to look less than dapper when the Chosen One and I meet again.

Nor would I wish to make a shabby show in front of the unknown Branagh, be he were-dolphin or possible rival. He seems from his Facebook photographs to have a certain naïve attraction, though it's hard to tell when a man is dressed as Flipper and holding up a sign saying 'Shop With Us For A Whale Of A Bargain'.

I certainly do not believe him to be a Winter Midnight. An undistinguished Spring, at best. Though he may – I suppose – scrub up well. I shall have to observe him closely in order to refute the were-dolphin hypothesis.

 _Adieu!_ \- but only until I have better news to tell. The dark star of Bertrand du Fortunesa will rebound to greater heights than before: you can be sure of that, as sure as you are that I will always be the best-dressed man at any social gathering, and have the most springy and tenebrous hair.


End file.
